Working Life

I know, you are shocked, shocked, shocked that the proposal from Congressman Dave Camp, the Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is awful. But, good to have the facts on exactly why.

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Tom Daschle wasn’t the worst Democrat you could have in the Senate–yes, a back-handed compliment. Kind of populist on some issues. But, since he was defeated for re-election, he’s turned into a real corporate hack mouthpiece. Especially on trade.

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You take for granted that the malevolent Koch Brother billionaires and FOX will go all out to keep robbing workers. That’s just what they do. But, a much more pernicious danger undercutting workers is the inaccurate way in which the traditional “liberal” media and a whole raft of politicians describe what has happened to wages. It’s typically referred to as “wage stagnation”. That is false: it’s wage robbery.

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I don’t mind disagreeing with opponents on the merits of one proposal versus another. But, I have very little tolerance for just lying about the facts or, at best, muddling the truth about the reality. And, so, it is with healthcare: the continuing myth, promoted by both the political and media jabbering low-minds, that the president and his former Secretary of State both made the same mistake on health care–they opted for something too “complex” “inflexible”, “secretive” or “socialistic”, or a combination of all of the aforementioned descriptions.

It’s utter nonsense. They did make the same mistake–but it had nothing to do with complexity. It was entirely their immoral unwillingness to confront two powerful industries that have relentlessly killed hundreds of thousands of people, either by bankrupting those people or literally denying them care.

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It’s new data but not a new revelation because this bit of news is nothing we haven’t already become accustomed to. Corporations are robbing the country, robbing because corporations pocket profits made possible from all the investments in human and physical capital made thanks to taxes regular people pay but the same corporations do squat when it comes to paying a fair share.

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C’mon, seriously, has it gotten to the point of such desperation to pass middle-class crushing, poverty-enhancing trade deals that drive inequality that the White House treats its allies, members of Congress and activists as if they are idiots? That’s a rhetorical question.

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For the price of a measly $20 billion, the government left JP Morgan Chase walk away from the responsibility of helping fuel the wreckage that became the global financial crisis–and, to boot, it paved the way, incomprehensibly, for Jamie Dimon to get a big fat pay raise(long live the American free market!!!). Now, an important suit by Better Markets has been filed to potentially undo the deal, or, at least, force a more honest, open discussion about what the government’s cheap stay-out-of-jail, sock-it-to-the-customers actually says.

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Excuse me while we interrupt the hocus-pocus exercise of throwing a meager bone to a few workers on the minimum wage (a proposal, by the way, that is pathetic at $10.10 an hour) to point out: the few cents you think you are putting into a person’s left pocket by hiking a smidgen the minimum wage you are, then, yanking out of that person’s right pocket a whole lot more by promoting the horrendous Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and its malignant so-called “free trade” predecessors.

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Pete Seeger’s music and the inspiration and hope he gave to so many will be the highlights, correctly so, of what many people remember about him. But, I’d like to make sure that we remember the singular aspect about Pete Seeger that really makes him unique: the activist.

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The silence is pretty amazing. The man most responsible, or at least, a central player, in the greatest financial crisis in generations–a crisis that cost tens of millions of people around the globe their jobs and their futures–gets a whopping RAISE…and not a single political leader has stood up to challenge the generosity of the “free market”. This is corruption writ large. And, yet, not a word from the White House, not a word from any figures, future presidential candidates or otherwise, to take on what is a big middle finger to the entire American public.

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Par for the course. Though you would be right to say “you have got to be kidding,” the truth is that the signal has been sent from the White House and from most of Congress that the bankers will not go to jail and they will not bear any personal cost of causing the greatest financial crisis in generations, a crisis that cost millions of people their jobs, thei retirement, their dignity and their futures. And the crystal clear example, from the outset, has been Jamie Dimon. He’s getting a big fat raise.

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Not a new idea but worth spotlighting on MLK Day that class warfare is forging ahead. Oxfam, in anticipation of the gathering of the Masters of the Universe at Davos, tells us this nugget: the richest 85 people have the same wealth as 3.5 billion people, half the population of the world.

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I was going to write something else about the foolishness of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) but, hey, WikiLeaks beat me to it. This dumbness on the part of the Democratic Party to wrap their arms around so-called “free trade”, stretching all the way back to Bill Clinton and his (and, I know people want to conveniently forget, ROBERT REICH’S) passionate embrace of NAFTA, is the sad gift that keeps giving. And, now, another Democrat is happy to walk all over the environment to achieve…what? More stupid trade policy.

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Yesterday, I wrote about a report that basically said it’s a myth that tax cuts are a huge boon to the economy. Well, there’s actually a second part to that.

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So, as we gather steam towards Tax Day, let’s keep up this drumbeat: tax cuts don’t help the economy. Or, at least, there isn’t the evidence to prove they do. So, says the Congressional Research Service.

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Punishment should bring about change — that’s what every parent wants. More important, that’s what societal punishment I suppose tries to accomplishment. Which is why billions of dollars in fines doesn’t really matter. Nothing will change.

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